РУАЭСТ (RUAEST)
The Genre of the Minuet in the Works of Maurice Ravel
The article deals with the key issue of modern musicology, the issue of a certain genre that prevails in the works of a music composer, an ability of a genre to become a factor that determines stylistic speciёcity. In the works of Maurice Ravel this style-forming factor is dance. On the example of the minuet that occupies a special place in the works of the composer, the article explores the principles of mediation of choreographic and musical features of the dance prototype at the semantic and structural levels in the thematism and form generation of Ravel’s works. The aesthetic perfection and delicate elegance of gestures, graphical precision of choreographic pattern and dialogueness typical for the minuet have been reяected in the motive-composition character of the thematism, the periodicity of the syntax, the relative stability of the meter, the active use of various methods of polyphonization of the musical texture, the exclusive role of the principle of symmetry on the compositional, melodic and textural levels of the musical form. Individual features of the minuet in various works of Ravel are related to their stylistic origins and genre fusion creating certain imagery.